News

The Twilight Zone is one of the best series ever put on television, with its sharp storytelling and signature twists elevating it to a perennial evergreen. The anthology format gave it a good deal of creative flexibility, exploring everything from comedy to horror during its run. Creator Rod Serling possessed the precise kind of mind to package it for television at that time. Many of its episodes have become pop-culture staples, and even the fair-to-middling ones still carry a punch that's hard to beat. The series' influence continues to be felt today, though no one has yet succeeded in recreating its formula.

The question of which episodes rank as the best will always be the subject of heated debate among The Twilight Zone fans, and everyone has their favorites. There are more than enough strong episodes to keep that argument going indefinitely. The best of them, however, combine a strong...

The Twilight Zone is one of the most influential television series of all time. Its anthology format and clever updates of campfire tales struck a chord with audiences in the early 1960s, as creator Rod Serling and his colleagues combined sci-fi with a strong social conscience. The series' signature ironic twists have never lost their sting, and the moral lessons beneath the chills give it an evergreen quality that helped it endure over the years.

In the process, it has influenced countless sci-fi and horror filmmakers who were inspired by it at an early age. Some of them went on to direct movies with a close resemblance to Serling's tales, and there are plenty of feature-length movies which bear the distinctive stamp of a specific episode. Each one tells its own story, while carrying the core of an idea that effectively started with The Twilight Zone.

A Nightmare on Elm...

Often under the guise of procedural television that encapsulates suspense, horror, and science fiction, anthologies are a format of cinematic storytelling that often gets tossed under the rug of narrative mediums. However, whenever one does surface, it's often a great labor of love with clever stories, chilling revelations, and spicy plots.

With Prime's Secret Level animated anthology covering stories throughout the gaming universe of both the virtual and tabletop fandoms, it's a great time to revisit or discover some other great televised anthologies that scratch that same itch that present such a variety of style and narrative flare. These anthologies are placed based on their relatability to Secret Level's tone, style, and originality, and how close the listed show relates to that feeling. So what's the next short-story extravaganza to binge to get that fix?

The Outer Limits Zeroed-In On Sci-Fi's Burning Questions

Year

1963-65, 1995-2002

Where Can I Watch?...

Even though The Twilight Zone is widely recognized as a peak achievement in TV history, its true impact is hard to estimate. Iconic creator Rod Serling's flair for clever twists and cutting social commentary captivated audiences long after its original run, and many classic stories have been referenced, remade, and lovingly parodied in countless movies and shows. The following famous episodes are like fairy tales that fans return to over and over again.

Serling's unique vision gave rise to a franchise beyond the five-season original series. After the 1959-1964 run, The Twilight Zone was revived in 1985, 2002, and by Jordan Peele in 2019. Many of the original series' most famous episodes made their way into the subsequent shows, and enjoyed big-budget updates in 1983's The Twilight Zone: The Movie. The list below includes the Serling series' greatest hits, including one that fans may not guess inspired many of their favorite shows.

Along with being one of the finest shows in the history of television, the original run of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone" could function as a laboratory for advancements in visual effects. The often fantastical nature of the series, and Serling's desire to push the envelope of the still-developing medium's potential, was something of a creative sandbox for directors. As such, the show attracted not just aspiring young filmmakers like Richard Donner, Jack Smight, and Richard C. Sarafian, but established masters on the level of Jacques Tourneur, Don Siegel, and Norman Z. McLeod.

Douglas Heyes was more of a journeyman director when entered "The Twilight Zone." His experience and skill were highly valuable to Serling, who assigned him a total of nine episodes – the second most over the show's five seasons next to John Brahm's 12. Heyes' most celebrated episode is probably "Eye of the Beholder," the creepy tale...

The tenth episode of "The Twilight Zone" was an episode called "Judgment Night," written by show creator Rod Serling and directed by John Brahm. "Judgment Night" takes place on board a British cargo liner crossing the Atlantic in the year 1942. The main character is an amnesiac named Carl (Nehemiah Persoff) who has no recollection as to how he got on the boat or what his name is. Everyone on board the cargo ship is deathly afraid of Nazi U-boats that may potentially be lurking in the water, and Carl is infected with the premonition that something utterly horrifying is going to happen at 1:15. Curiouser: a cap found in Carl's quarters indicates that he is a member of the Nazi navy. What is going on? 

Then a Nazi U-boat does appear in the water next to the cargo ship and blows it up at 1:15, killing everyone on board, including Carl.

These last few years the Criterion Channel have made October viewing much easier to prioritize, and in the spirit of their ’70s and ’80s horror series we’ve graduated to––you guessed it––”’90s Horror.” A couple of obvious classics stand with cult favorites and more unknown entities (When a Stranger Calls Back and Def By Temptation are new to me). Three more series continue the trend: “Technothrillers” does what it says on the tin, courtesy the likes of eXistenZ and Demonlover; “Art-House Horror” is precisely the kind of place to host Cure, Suspiria, Onibaba; and “Pre-Code Horror” is a black-and-white dream. Phantom of the Paradise, Unfriended, and John Brahm’s The Lodger are added elsewhere.

James Gray is the latest with an “Adventures in Moviegoing” series populated by deep cuts and straight classics. Stonewalling and restorations of Trouble Every Day and The Devil, Probably make streaming debuts, while Flesh for Frankenstein,...

Few American filmmakers of the last 40 years await a major rediscovery like Hal Hartley, whose traces in modern movies are either too-minor or entirely unknown. Thus it’s cause for celebration that the Criterion Channel are soon launching a major retrospective: 13 features (which constitutes all but My America) and 17 shorts, a sui generis style and persistent vision running across 30 years. Expect your Halloween party to be aswim in Henry Fool costumes.

Speaking of: there’s a one-month headstart on seasonal programming with the 13-film “High School Horror”––most notable perhaps being a streaming premiere for the uncut version of Suspiria, plus the rare opportunity to see a Robert Rodriguez movie on the Criterion Channel––and a retrospective of Hong Kong vampire movies. A retrospective of ’70s car movies offer chills and thrills of a different sort

Six films by Allan Dwan and 12 “gaslight noirs” round out the main September series; The Eight Mountains,...

Click here to read the full article.

Faye Marlowe, a 1940s starlet best known for her turn opposite the doomed Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell and George Sanders in the film noir classic Hangover Square, has died. She was 95.

Marlowe died May 5 in Cary, North Carolina, her daughter Karen Joseph told The Hollywood Reporter.

In her brief Hollywood career, the dark-haired Marlowe also starred alongside Richard Conte in The Spider (1945), another excellent film noir; with Richard Crane in Johnny Comes Flying Home (1946); and, as the title character, with Eddie Albert in Rendezvous With Annie (1946).

After she appeared on the stage for John Brahm, the German director gave her a key role in her first movie, Fox’s Hangover Square (1945). She played the pianist girlfriend of a mild-mannered composer (Cregar) who suffers from blackouts and becomes a serial killer in the turn-of-the century, London-set thriller scored by Bernard Herrmann.

(Cregar, who was...

Mickey Rooney Jr., an original Mouseketeer, musician and actor who was the first child of Mickey Rooney, has died. He was 77.

Rooney Jr. died Saturday at his home in Glendale, Arizona, according to a Facebook post from friend and actor Paul Petersen. The two were both original Mouseketeers at Disney.

“Mickey Junior was tall and talented. He could sing, dance and act…and get in trouble,” Petersen wrote. He continued: “Mickey Junior was the personification of ‘damaged goods.’ He gave all he could.”

Rooney Jr. played in bands with Willie Nelson as well as appearing alongside him in “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Songwriter.” He helped score the soundtrack to John Brahm’s “Hot Rods to Hell,” which he also had a small role in. In 1975, he had a role in the NBC movie “Beyond the Bermuda Triangle.”

Born Joseph Yule III in Birmingham, Ala., he and brother Tim Rooney were hired...

Click here to read the full article.

Mickey Rooney Jr., an original Mouseketeer, musician and actor who was the first of screen legend Mickey Rooney‘s nine children, has died. He was 77.

Rooney Jr. died Saturday at his home in Glendale, Arizona, his longtime companion Chrissie Brown told The Hollywood Reporter. The cause of death is unknown, she said.

Rooney Jr. played in bands with Willie Nelson and appeared with the actor-musician in Jerry Schatzberg’s Honeysuckle Rose (1980) and Alan Rudolph’s Songwriter (1984). He also had small parts in John Brahm’s Hot Rods to Hell (1966) — he helped score the soundtrack — and in the 1975 NBC movie Beyond the Bermuda Triangle.

His mother was Betty Jane Baker, a singer and winner of the 1944 Miss Alabama beauty pageant. She first met Mickey Rooney when he was stationed in the U.S. Army in Birmingham, Alabama, during World War II. She became the second...

As 2021 mercifully winds down, the Criterion Channel have a (November) lineup that marks one of their most diverse selections in some time—films by the new masters Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Garrett Bradley, Dan Sallitt’s Fourteen (one of 2020’s best films) couched in a fantastic retrospective, and Criterion editions of old favorites.

Fourteen is featured in “Between Us Girls: Bonds Between Women,” which also includes Céline and Julie, The Virgin Suicides, and Yvonne Rainer’s Privilege. Of equal note are Criterion editions for Ghost World, Night of the Hunter, and (just in time for del Toro’s spin) Nightmare Alley—all stacked releases in their own right.

See the full list of October titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

300 Nassau, Marina Lameiro, 2015

5 Card Stud, Henry Hathaway, 1968

Alone, Garrett Bradley, 2017

Álvaro, Daniel Wilson, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Lazarowich, and Chloe Zimmerman, 2015

America, Garrett Bradley, 2019

Angel Face, Otto Preminger, 1953

Angels Wear White,...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***Two of the 1940s Raymond Chandler adaptations, Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946) and Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (1944), are rightly considered classics. Hawks identified the key challenge of the first-person detective story: find a leading man interesting enough that the audience doesn't get bored of seeing him in every scene. Hawks hired Bogart.Dmytryk was lumbered with Dick Powell, but Powell stretched himself and Dmytryk did everything to make the surroundings interesting, even nightmarish.The third movie from the third major studio is Robert Montgomery...

The Mad Magician

Blu ray

Powerhouse Films/Indicator

1954 / 1.85:1 / 73 min.

Starring Vincent Price, Donald Randolph, Eva Gabor

Cinematography by Bert Glennon

Directed by John Brahm

For Vincent Price, revenge was a dish served cold and in 3-D. In 1954, just a year after his three-dimensional rampage in Andre DeToth‘s House of Wax, the actor returned in a virtual remake – the budget was lower and the black and white imagery couldn’t hold a candle to the rich WarnerColor but John Brahm’s The Mad Magician scares up some legitimate in-your-face fun.

Price plays Don Gallico, an undervalued inventor at Illusions, Inc., a full service shop for professional prestidigitators. It’s a dead end job in more ways than one and his newest creation could give him the break he’s waited for. His biggest obstacle is his own boss, a Dickensian villain named Ross Ormond (Donald Randolph) who’s managed...

No, it’s not a the-day-after sequel to The Lost Weekend, but a class-act mystery-horror from 20th-Fox, at a time when the studio wasn’t keen on scare shows. John Brahm directs the ill-fated Laird Cregar as a mad musician . . . or, at least a musician driven mad by a perfidious femme fatale, Darryl Zanuck’s top glamour girl Linda Darnell.

Hangover Square

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1945 /B&W / 1:37 Academy / 77 min. / Street Date November 21, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, George Sanders, Faye Marlowe, Glenn Langan, Alan Napier.

Cinematography: Joseph Lashelle

Film Editor: Harry Reynolds

Original Music: Bernard Herrmann

Written by Barré Lyndon

Produced by Robert Bassler

Directed by John Brahm

Here’s a serious quality upgrade for horror fans. Although technically a period murder thriller, as a horror film John Brahm’s tense Hangover Square betters its precursor The Lodger in almost every department. We don...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Tuesday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best show currently on TV?” can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: Who is the best TV director? Why? (For old, current or upcoming shows.)

Marisa Roffman (@marisaroffman), TV Guide Magazine

The recent Emmy Awards was a good reminder of just how great television directors are right now. It was the best overall crop we’ve had in years, and one of the few categories where it felt like it could have gone any way.

But in terms of best television director, I’m partial to David Nutter. His 30-plus year resume is impressive (“The Sopranos,” “ER,” “The X-Files,” plus an Emmy win for “Game of Thrones”) and wildly varied (he’s done procedurals like “Without a Trace,...

It’s finally here in all its glory, the Howard Hawks movie nobody loves. The epitome of clueless ’60s filmmaking by an auteur who left his thinking cap back with Bogie and Bacall, this show is a PC quagmire lacking the usual compensation of exploitative thrills. But hey, it has a hypnotic appeal all its own: we’ll not abandon any movie where Teri Garr dances.

Red Line 7000

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1965 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date September 19, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: James Caan, Laura Devon, Gail Hire, Charlene Holt, John Robert Crawford, Marianna Hill, James (Skip) Ward, Norman Alden, George Takei, Diane Strom, Anthony Rogers, Robert Donner, Teri Garr.

Cinematography: Milton Krasner

Film Editors: Bill Brame, Stuart Gilmore

Original Music: Nelson Riddle

Written by George Kirgo story by Howard Hawks

Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks

Critics have been raking Howard Hawks’ stock car racing epic...

Ricardo Cortez biography 'The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez' – Paramount's 'Latin Lover' threat to a recalcitrant Rudolph Valentino, and a sly, seductive Sam Spade in the original film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon.' 'The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez': Author Dan Van Neste remembers the silent era's 'Latin Lover' & the star of the original 'The Maltese Falcon' At odds with Famous Players-Lasky after the release of the 1922 critical and box office misfire The Young Rajah, Rudolph Valentino demands a fatter weekly paycheck and more control over his movie projects. The studio – a few years later to be reorganized under the name of its distribution arm, Paramount – balks. Valentino goes on a “one-man strike.” In 42nd Street-style, unknown 22-year-old Valentino look-alike contest winner Jacob Krantz of Manhattan steps in, shortly afterwards to become known worldwide as Latin Lover Ricardo Cortez of...

By Hank Reineke

Though Vincent Price would eventually garner a well-deserved reputation as Hollywood’s preeminent bogeyman, it was only really with André De Toth’s House of Wax (1953) that the actor would become associated with all things sinister. In some sense the playful, nervously elegant Price was an odd successor to the horror film-maestro throne: he was a somewhat aristocratic psychotic who shared neither Boris Karloff’s cold and malevolent scowl nor Bela Lugosi’s distinctly unhinged madness or old-world exoticism.

His early film career started in a less pigeonholed manner: as a budding movie actor with a seven year contract for Universal Studios in the 1940s, the tall, elegant Price would appear in a number of semi-distinguished if modestly-budgeted romantic comedies and dramas. His contract with Universal was apparently non-exclusive, and his most memorable roles for the studio were his earliest. In a harbinger of things to come,...

Time limit: 0 Quiz-summary

0 of 10 questions completed

Questions:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Information

A quick look at the slinky sleight-of-hand involved in making movies about magic.

You have already completed the quiz before. Hence you can not start it again.

Quiz is loading...

You must sign in or sign up to start the quiz.

You have to finish following quiz, to start this quiz:

Results

0 of 10 questions answered correctly

Your time:

Time has elapsed

You have reached 0 of 0 points, (0)

Categories Not categorized 0% Your result has been entered into leaderboard Loading Name: E-Mail: Captcha: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Answered Review Question 1 of 10 1. Question

In 1932’s Chandu The Magician, Edmund Lowe plays the titular wizard. What famous boogie man plays his adversary?

Bela Lugosi Boris Karloff Peter Lorre Correct

Lugosi is a lot of fun but the real star of this movie is director William Cameron Menzies whose distinctive visual style graces every scene.

Incorrect

Question 2 of 10 2. Question

1953’s Houdini...

The Mad Magician

3-D Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1954 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 72 min. / Street Date January 10, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Vincent Price, Mary Murphy, Eva Gabor, John Emery, Donald Randolph, Lenita Lane, Patrick O’Neal, Jay Novello, Corey Allen, Conrad Brooks, Tom Powers, Lyle Talbot.

Cinematography: Bert Glennon

Editor: Grant Whytock

Original Music: Arthur Lange, Emil Newman

Written by: Crane Wilbur

Produced by: Bryan Foy

Directed by John Brahm

Twilight Time, bless ’em, hands us another treat to go with their 3-D discs of Man in the Dark, Miss Sadie Thompson and Harlock Space Pirate 3-D — and this time it’s a fun bit of 1950s horror — with a hot pair of short subject extras.

There have been plenty of theories as to why horror films became scarce after WW2; it’s as if the U.S. film industry took a ten-year break from the supernatural, and partly...

An eye-opening, or should I say door-opening, Q&A with the director of Never Open the Door courtesy of our very own Derek Anderson kicks off today's Horror Highlights! Also, we have trailers for both Pitchfork and Red Hollow and a call for submissions for Popcorn Fright Film Festival 2017.

Never Open the Door Q&A: Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us, Vito. When did you first come up with the idea for Never Open the Door?

Vito Trabucco: Thanks for having me. The idea first came from Chris Maltauro, my producer and co-writer, our camera operator Mike Bates, and me one night in a parking lot when we wrapped on another shoot. A few months prior I completed my first feature, Bloody Bloody Bible Camp. We were just eager to do another one.

Where did filming take place and what did that environment add...

Fox’s first official monster movie is a terrific-looking but mostly flat mystery that tries its utmost not to be a horror film at all. It’s a head scratcher that will interest fans of the expressive John Brahm, and help completists scratch another werewolf film off their gotta-see lists.

The Undying Monster

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1942 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 62 min. / Street Date December 13, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring James Ellison, Heather Angel, John Howard, Bramwell Fletcher, Heather Thatcher, Aubrey Mather, Halliwell Hobbes, Alec Craig, Holmes Herbert, Eily Malyon, Charles McGraw.

Cinematography Lucien Ballard

<Film Editor Harry Reynolds

Original Music Emil Newman, David Raksin

Written byLillie Hayward, Michel Jacoby from a novel by Jessie Douglas Kerrruish

Produced by Bryan Foy

Directed by John Brahm

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

After the heyday of Universal horror in the first half of the 1930s, horror pictures went on the decline for over twenty years.

Kino Lorber announced the release of John Brahm's The Lodger (1944) on Blu-ray. Set in London during the Jack the Ripper murders, Robert (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) and Ellen Burton (Sara Allgood) rent their spare room to an elusive man named Slade (Laird Cregar). When the Ripper murders begin to rise, the couple suspects Slade is somehow involved...

From Kino Lorber: "Coming Soon on Blu-ray!

The Lodger (1944) Starring Merle Oberon, George Sanders, Laird Cregar, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood - Directed by John Brahm."

Synopsis (via Blu-ray.com): "In London in 1889, retiree Robert Burton (Cedric Hardwicke) and his wife, Ellen (Sara Allgood), rent a spare room to the mysterious Slade (Laird Cregar) as Jack the Ripper continues to terrorize the city. The Burtons' niece, Kitty (Merle Oberon), is a music hall singer who initially grows fond of the eccentric lodger, but, when the Ripper's body count rises, she...

The icon-establishing performances Marilyn Monroe gave in Howard Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) are ones for the ages, touchstone works that endure because of the undeniable comic energy and desperation that sparked them from within even as the ravenous public became ever more enraptured by the surface of Monroe’s seductive image of beauty and glamour. Several generations now probably know her only from these films, or perhaps 1955’s The Seven-Year Itch, a more famous probably for the skirt-swirling pose it generated than anything in the movie itself, one of director Wilder’s sourest pictures, or her final completed film, The Misfits (1961), directed by John Huston, written by Arthur Miller and costarring Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.

But in Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) she delivers a powerful dramatic performance as Nell, a psychologically devastated, delusional, perhaps psychotic young woman apparently on...

Robert Walker: Actor in MGM films of the '40s. Robert Walker: Actor who conveyed boy-next-door charms, psychoses At least on screen, I've always found the underrated actor Robert Walker to be everything his fellow – and more famous – MGM contract player James Stewart only pretended to be: shy, amiable, naive. The one thing that made Walker look less like an idealized “Average Joe” than Stewart was that the former did not have a vacuous look. Walker's intelligence shone clearly through his bright (in black and white) grey eyes. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” programming, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating today, Aug. 9, '15, to Robert Walker, who was featured in 20 films between 1943 and his untimely death at age 32 in 1951. Time Warner (via Ted Turner) owns the pre-1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library (and almost got to buy the studio outright in 2009), so most of Walker's movies have...

This is a tale of chance encounters.1) René Clair is in London, making The Ghost Goes West (1935). Something of a flaneur, he has strolled down to the East End, and his noctivagation leads him to a Limehouse pub which strikes him with an intense but mysterious feeling of déjà vu."Of course!" he suddenly thinks. "D.W. Griffith: Broken Blossoms!" The pub is the very image of Griffith's Hollywood recreation of Victorian London from his 1919 film.And there, at the bar, sits D.W. Griffith himself. Clair approaches this mirage and learns that Griffith is in London to direct a remake of Broken Blossoms at Twickenham Studios. Drink is taken.2) All this comes from screenwriter Rodney Ackland's bittersweet memoir of his work in British cinema, The Celluloid Mistress, co-written with Elspeth Grant. He further explains that his idolisation of Griffith prompted him to volunteer his services in any capacity as...

‘Gone with the Wind’ actress Mary Anderson dead at 96; also featured in Alfred Hitchcock thriller ‘Lifeboat’ Mary Anderson, an actress featured in both Gone with the Wind and Alfred Hitchcock’s adventure thriller Lifeboat, died following a series of small strokes on Sunday, April 6, 2014, while under hospice care in Toluca Lake/Burbank, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Anderson, the widow of multiple Oscar-winning cinematographer Leon Shamroy, had turned 96 on April 3. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1918, Mary Anderson was reportedly discovered by director George Cukor, at the time looking for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s film version of Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller Gone with the Wind. Instead of Scarlett, eventually played by Vivien Leigh, Anderson was cast in the small role of Maybelle Merriwether — most of which reportedly ended up on the cutting-room floor. Cukor was later fired from the project; his replacement, Victor Fleming,...

Guest in the House

Written by Hunt Stromberg

Directed by John Brahm

USA, 1944

The family unit is, or should be, the strongest in one’s life, the one from which a solid emotional backbone is based from, the unshakable bond that brings its members together through thick and thin. For that reason, a troubled familial relationship, any sort of considerable rift between two or more of the members, may be the worst variety of schism afflicting previously close loved ones. Said troubles may not necessarily originate from within the unit, but from outside, such as when a new member is admitted through marriage. John Brahm’s 1944 melodrama noir Guest in the House concerns itself with this very matter (minus marriage), demonstrating the terrible deconstruction of a previously tightly knit family tearing apart at the seams.

The Proctors await the return of one of their own, Dr. Dan Proctor (Scott McKay...

The Mad Magician (1954)

Starring: Vincent Price, Mary Murphy, Eva Gabor

Writer: Crane Wilbur

Director: John Brahm

Synopsis (From Sony):

Vincent Price plays Gallico the Great, an inspired inventor of magic acts who longs to perform his creations himself. When he finally gets his chance, the production is closed by Gallico’s cruel manager, who wants a rival magician to perform Gallico’s greatest trick, The Lady and the Buzz Saw. An enraged Gallico turns into a homicidal maniac, taking out his victims with the same methods he used to create his illusions.

Review:

The Mad Magician is one of those movies where a man is wronged in the worst imaginable ways, and he goes off the deep end, and you don’t blame him. Matter of fact, you’ll root for him. Losing his hard work to his manager is really just the tip of the iceberg; something of...

A periodic round up of interesting and notable books about film, including biographies, histories, critical assessments, and more.

I have to confess from the off that, apart from Daniel Day-Lewis’ typically spellbinding performance (if that’s even the right word for what he does) and the meticulous detail and cinematography that made the film a joy to look at, Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln left me rather cold; perhaps if I had read Lincoln: A Cinematic and Historical Companion (Disney Editions, distributed in the UK by Turnaround www.turnarounduk.com) beforehand, my viewing experience would have been richer and more rewarding.

The book opens with earnest forewards by Spielberg and producer Kathleen Kennedy, and is thereafter divided into two sections, each in two parts. Part One, ‘Players on the Stage of History’, features full page colour photos of the film’s main players in the style of 19th century portraiture, which...

"Let's conduct a thought experiment," suggests Dan Callahan, setting the mood at Alt Screen for Film Forum's two-week, 22-film celebration of the Bernard Herrmann centennial: "what do you hear when you see the name Bernard Herrmann? The low, sleeping-beast woodwinds that signal the eminent death of Charles Foster Kane? The Irish horn-fiddle-cymbal flourishes that slice through The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)? The otherworldly, quivering theremin that hovers over The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)? You might need to struggle to piece together more than bits of those scores, but I'm guessing that you could probably notate almost all of Herrmann's black-and-white strings for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) or the sprightly anxiety of his score for North by Northwest (1959). Even the disturbingly sexy opening theme of Marnie (1964), with its straight-ahead male horn thrust (Yes, Marnie, yes!) and its ascending-descending female squeal of strings (No, Mark, no!). The romantic maximalism of Herrmann's...

Claudette Colbert, Alla Nazimova, Marion Davies, Charles Boyer: Cinecon 2011 Thursday September 1 (photo: Alla Nazimova) 7:00 Hollywood Rhythm (1934) 7:10 Welcoming Remarks 7:15 Hollywood Story (1951) 77 min. Richard Conte, Julie Adams, Richard Egan. Dir: William Castle. 8:35 Q & A with Julie Adams 9:10 Blazing Days (1927) 60 min. Fred Humes. Dir: William Wyler. 10:20 In The Sweet Pie And Pie (1941) 18 min 10:40 She Had To Eat (1937) 75 min. Jack Haley, Rochelle Hudson, Eugene Pallette. Friday September 2 9:00 Signing Off (1936) 9:20 Moon Over Her Shoulder (1941) 68 min. Dan Dailey, Lynn Bari, John Sutton, Alan Mowbray. 10:40 The Active Life Of Dolly Of The Dailies (1914) 15 min. Mary Fuller. 10:55 Stronger Than Death (1920) 80 min. Alla Nazimova, Charles Bryant. Dir: Herbert Blaché, Charles Bryant, Robert Z. Leonard. 12:15 Lunch Break 1:45 Open Track (1916) 2:00 On The Night Stage (1915) 60 min. William S. Hart, Rhea Mitchell. Dir: Reginald Barker. 3:15 50 Miles From Broadway (1929) 23 min 3:45 Cinerama Adventure (2002). Dir: David Strohmaier. 5:18 Discussion...

Ann Sothern, Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, A Letter to Three Wives Linda Darnell, the gorgeous leading lady of numerous 20th Century Fox productions of the '40s, is Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" player this Saturday, August 27. TCM, which has leased titles from the Fox library, is showing 14 Linda Darnell movies, including no less than 9 TCM premieres. [Linda Darnell Movie Schedule.] Right now, TCM is showing writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives (1949), winner of Academy Awards for Best Direction and Best Screenplay. This curious comedy-drama about a husband who leaves his wife for another woman — but whose husband? Linda Darnell's, Jeanne Crain's, or Ann Sothern's? — also earned Mankiewicz the very first Directors Guild of America Award and a Writers Guild Award (which Mankiewicz shared with Vera Caspary) for the Best Written American Comedy. The husbands in question are Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, and Jeffrey Lynn.

Linda Darnell Linda Darnell on TCM: A Letter To Three Wives, No Way Out Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Zero Hour! (1957) When a flight crew falls ill only man who can land the plane is afraid of flying. Dir: Hall Bartlett. Cast: Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, Sterling Hayden. Bw-81 mins, Letterbox Format. 7:30 Am Sweet And Low Down (1944) Dir: Archie Mayo. Cast: Benny Goodman, Linda Darnell, Jack Oakie. Bw-76 mins. 9:00 Am Rise And Shine (1941) The college president head cheerleader and a gambling gangster try to keep a flunking football star in the game. Dir: Allan Dwan. Cast: Jack Oakie, George Murphy, Linda Darnell. Bw-88 mins. 10:45 Am Brigham Young (1940) Two young Mormons struggle to survive their people's journey to a new home in the West. Dir: Henry Hathaway. Cast: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Dean Jagger. Bw-113 mins. 12:45 Pm Two Flags West (1950) A bitter...

Ralph Bellamy on TCM: Sunrise At Campobello, The Awful Truth Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Carefree (1938) A psychiatrist falls in love with the woman he's supposed to be nudging into marriage with someone else. Dir: Mark Sandrich. Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ralph Bellamy. Bw-83 mins. 7:30 Am The Secret Six (1931) A secret society funds the investigation of a bootlegging gang. Dir: George Hill. Cast: Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, John Mack Brown. Bw-84 mins. 9:00 Am Headline Shooter (1933) A newsreel photographer neglects his love life to get the perfect shot. Dir: Otto Brower. Cast: William Gargan, Frances Dee, Ralph Bellamy. Bw-61 mins. 10:15 Am Picture Snatcher (1933) An ex-con brings his crooked ways to a job as a news photographer. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. Cast: James Cagney, Ralph Bellamy, Patricia Ellis. Bw-77 mins. 11:45 Am The Wedding Night (1935) A married author falls for the beautiful farm girl...

We loves stills. And The Undying Monster.

You can’t go wrong with a werewolf picture, even when it’s one that’s a shameless knock-off of the Universal classic, recasting The Wolf Man as The Undying Monster in a classic pose your monster-loving pop subconsciousness is going to find awfully familiar.

Look:

Click for the massive version.

John Howard (maybe) strikes a classic pose on a foggy set. Indeed, Lucien Ballard’s atmospheric photography and John Brahm’s fluid direction do a lot to hide the B-picture origins of 20th Century Fox’s attempt to imitate The Wolf Man. I saw this on tv during the 50s long before the Universal pictures hit the tube and thought it was pretty cool. There’s a curse on the Hammond family, who live in a big manor house on the moors and are being knocked off by..something fuzzy.

Brahm, in...

This stunning French grande poster for The Lodger (the 1944 John Brahm version, not the 1927 Hitchcock, though based on the same Jack the Ripper novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes which has been adapted five times in all) is a nice early take on the image-within-image style that poster designers use far less cleverly today (most recently for Jane Eyre or The Next Three Days.) The poster was illustrated by one Roger Jacquier, otherwise known as Rojac, who seems to have been quite a prolific illustrator in the 1940s and ’50s, the era of le cinéma du papa, before the photo montages of Nouvelle Vague designers like Ferraci became the vogue.

I will write more about Rojac’s designs, mostly for French films, at a later date, but here is another of his striking, colorful and pleasingly uncluttered designs for a Hollywood movie, and this time it is Hitchcock: 1949’s The Parradine Case.

Now comes two of the more intriguingly directed episodes, full of tilted cameras, expressive visuals and engrossing atmospheres. Both as well have two of the great endings to the series, both of which wind up casting a new light on the preceding drama.

Season 1, Episode 13 - The Four Of Us Are Dying

Originally aired on January 1, 1960

Written by: Rod Serling, based on a story by George Clayton Johnson

Directed by: John Brahms

He was Arch Hammer, a cheap little man who just checked in. He was Johnny Foster, who played a trumpet and was loved beyond words. He was Virgil Sterig, with money in his pocket. He was Andy Marshak, who got some of his agony back on a sidewalk in front of a cheap hotel. Hammer, Foster, Sterig, Marshak— and all four of them were dying.

The episode closes with our main character, Arch Hammer, stammering at gunpoint that...

Karloff's classic horror television series "Thriller" is finally making its way to DVD courtesy of Image Entertainment and we couldn't be happier. All 67 episodes will be transferred to a 14 DVD box set due out August 3rd...

Below is the press release and DVD box artwork for the series.

For two seasons and over sixty episodes, horror icon Boris Karloff invited television audiences to enjoy captivating tales of suspense, murder, and relentless terror as host of the 1960s anthology series “Thriller.” Featuring stories from such master storytellers as Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Bloch, Cornell Woolrich and starring a galaxy of classic television stars from the 1960s and 1970s, “Thriller” was dubbed by Stephen King as “the best horror series ever put on TV.”

Now, Image Entertainment proudly announces a tribute to a television legend with the August 31st release of “Thriller: The Complete Series” 14-dvd Deluxe Box Set. All 67 unforgettable episodes have been remastered,...

Now this is the way we love to end a Friday. Fans of Boris Karloff and classic horror television shows have long sought after the series "Thriller". It was available on VHS way back when and of course almost every bootlegger has peddled a copy online at one point or another, but now thanks to Image Entertainment the wait and the search are officially over!

From the Press Release

For two seasons and over sixty episodes, horror icon Boris Karloff invited television audiences to enjoy captivating tales of suspense, murder, and relentless terror as host of the 1960s anthology series “Thriller.” Featuring stories from such master storytellers as Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Bloch, Cornell Woolrich and starring a galaxy of classic television stars from the 1960s and 1970s, “Thriller” was dubbed by Stephen King as “the best horror series ever put on TV.”

Now, Image Entertainment proudly announces a tribute...

We come to our first episode not written by series mastermind Rod Serling, a psychological horror entry by Charles Beaumont blurring the line between reality and dreams. Then, Serling's own take on a nightmare, his not an internalized terror but an eternity of horror wrought by who else but the main character himself.

Season 1, Episode 9 - Perchance To Dream

Originally aired on November 27, 1959

Written by: Charles Beaumont

Directed by: Robert Florey

"They say a dream takes only a second or so, and yet in that second a man can live a lifetime. He can suffer and die, and who's to say which is the greater reality: the one we know or the one in dreams, between heaven, the sky, the earth- and in the Twilight Zone."

An old legend tells us that if while you sleep you dream of falling off a high precipice and reach the bottom before waking up,...

We come to our first episode not written by series mastermind Rod Serling, a psychological horror entry by Charles Beaumont blurring the line between reality and dreams. Then, Serling's own take on a nightmare, his not an internalized terror but an eternity of horror wrought by who else but the main character himself.

Season 1, Episode 9 - Perchance To Dream

Originally aired on November 27, 1959

Written by: Charles Beaumont

Directed by: Robert Florey

"They say a dream takes only a second or so, and yet in that second a man can live a lifetime. He can suffer and die, and who's to say which is the greater reality: the one we know or the one in dreams, between heaven, the sky, the earth- and in the Twilight Zone."

An old legend tells us that if while you sleep you dream of falling off a high precipice and reach the bottom before waking up,...

Two marvelous episodes, both ultimately dealing with the theme of isolation and loneliness. Even more, one could almost start where the other ends, the climactic end-of-the-world as seen from a singular viewpoint melding into a view of a planet with only one inhabitant.

Season 1, Episode 7 – The Lonely

Originally aired on November 13, 1959

Written by: Rod Serling

Directed by: Jack Smight

"On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment of a man's life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the years that act upon them; all of Mr. Corry's machines—including the one made in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete in the Twilight Zone."

Most fiction that deals with the idea of solitary confinement does so with the focus on the size and...